05/01/09 Meat the Truth

During the EVU Talks, see the film that depicts the truth too inconvenient even for Al Gore

Animal Friends, being a member of European Vegetarian Union, will host this year's annual meeting under the name of EVU Talks. The meeting will take place in Zagreb, on May 1 and 2.

EVU was officially founded in 1988 in Netherlands, with headquarters established in Switzerland. Being an umbrella organization of European societies that promote vegetarianism, it currently consists of 200 members from over 30 countries. All members have the same goal, and that goal is to create a world that has respect for life – the world without slaughterhouses. As such, it will promote the welfare of animals, both human and non-human.

During the EVU Talks, Animal Friends will show "Meat the Truth" for the first time, the film that illustrates the connection between the industry of meat and global warming which is the world's gravest environmental problem. The presentation of the film will take place on May 2 at 8 P.M. in the Cultural Information Centre (KIC) which is located in the Preradoviceva ulica 5.

Before the beginning of the film, Hildegund Scholvien, former president and one of the founding members of EVU, will open a public discussion in which she will present the European Vegetarian Union. Renato Pichler, the EVU president from Switzerland will talk about the V-Label, which can be recently found on Croatian products also.

"Meat the Truth" is the intriguing film about climate change that focuses on one of the major causes of global warming: factory farming. The problem of factory farming was thoroughly neglected in "An Inconvenient Truth," a film made by Al Gore.

During "Meat the Truth"'s one hour duration, we are being guided by Marianne Thieme, the president of the Dutch political party Party for the Animals, who shows us how cattle industry emits more greenhouse gasses than the total world traffic. The analysis illustrated in "Meat the Truth" was conducted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Watch Institute, Institute for Environmental Studies in Amsterdam, and many other prominent institutions.

By watching brief animations and talking to scientists, audience will see in which ways the consumption of meat and other animal byproducts is responsible for such a vast emission of greenhouse gasses, and why is it destroying the climate. Currently, over 50 billion animals are being intensively farmed for human consumption.

The growth of the world population increased the demand for meat consumption, and unless we change our habits, this problem will persist. The analyses estimates that meat consumption will be doubled by the year 2050, when the industry will be producing a shocking figure of 450 billion kilos of animal products per year.

Unlike some other films on the same subject, "Meat the Truth" offers a solution to consumers: simply by eating less or no meat at all, people can help reduce the emission of the greenhouse gasses. For instance, if all Americans gave-up meat for only one meal per week, the effect would be equivalent to removing 19,2 million vehicles from US roads for a year.

Many international stars like Pamela Anderson, Bill Maher, James Cromwell, Emily Deschanel, Tony Denison, Esai Morales and Megan Blake, have made their contribution by taking part in making the international version of the film.

Apart from global warming, there are other problems that urge humanity to change its eating habits. These problems include infectious diseases that are directly related to factory farming, such as BSE, bird flu and swine flu. The latter is currently becoming a pandemic.

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Animal Friends is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, founded in 2001 with the aim to promote animal protection and animal rights as well as veganism, as ethical, ecological and healthy lifestyle.
Animal Friends Croatia is a member organization of EVU,
Eurogroup for Animals, ECEAE, FFA, IAFC and OIPA.